Blog posts

Surgery and Cancer at the Imperial Festival

Festival 15

Surgery and Cancer were doing their bit at the Imperial College Festival this weekend and getting involved with everything going on.

The Institute of Global Health Innovation were there with a stand called “Taking mental health into your own Dancehands” which featured the Psychiatrist’s Couch of the Future and an over sized chair. Computational Systems medicine had a stand on “What’s in your pee” looking at how urine can help doctors find out how well your body is working.

The Combination Dance Co were there to raise awareness about Cancer research UK with their dancing cell components all across the campus over the weekend. Members of the Cancer team were hosting a stand called Tackling tough tumours looking at why some tumours become resistant to treatment and how scientists tackle this growing problem, with their very own #cellfie station to see a cancer up close.

Prof Gerry Thomas gave a lecture entitled “Doctors, what do you want to do with my genes” and was later spotted at the talkeoke table taking part in discussions on “What do you think about nuclear energy?”

Prof Roger Kneebone gave a talk with Prof Aaron Williamon on “Solving stage fright in virtual reality“.

Festival 1Lata Govada, Sean Kassen, Ahmad Bin Razmi and Naomi Chayen had a stand entitled ‘Making Complexity Crystal Clear’, highlighting the importance of protein crystals and their role in the facilitation of drug design. With the aid of the mRNA codon chart on display, the visitors were able to synthesise amino acids, the building blocks of proteins from sweeties. People of all ages and walks of life enthusiastically participated in ‘kebabing’ the 3 different coloured sweets (the nucleotide triplets) on cocktail sticks, after which they were allowed to take them away to eat.

Armed with the information of how proteins are made they then moved on to the second part of the booth to set up protein crystallization experiments with real protein and watched the crystals grow under the microscope. The young and old alike were pleased to see the crystal formation from their experiments. A surprised adult visitor stated, ‘I have a fair understanding of mineral crystals and their importance but had no clue that Protein Crystals contained such a wealth of information!’ On the other hand a young 9 year old visitor who aspires to be a doctor exclaimed ‘Wow, now I understand why we use the phrase Crystal Clear! ‘

To see more from the Festival check out #impfest or the College news story.

Mentoring update

MentoringThe Surgery and Cancer mentor scheme is now underway and we are organising a lunchtime session for active mentors to come and talk with each other about mentoring and any challenges they are experiencing. The objective of this session is to support the growing community of mentors across the FoM and to encourage, strengthen and share good practice across the schemes.

The session will take place at Hammersmith on Wednesday the 8th of July from 12:30 – 14:00.

Lunch will be provided so if you would like to attend please contact Kathryn Johnson

Remember if you would like to learn more about the Surgery and Cancer mentor scheme, sign up to become or get a mentor then please see the mentoring pages or sign up to attend one of the up coming workshops detailed below:

  • Wednesday 20th May    10 – 1        St Mary’s
  • Thursday 9th July           1-4           South Kensington

Dancers join the fight to beat Cancer at Imperial Festival

1280px-Morphsuit_photoshoot_leap

Imperial Festival, Saturday 9 and 10 May 2015

Saturday 9 May at 3pm
Sunday 10 May, 12.30pm & 2pm
Imperial College, Exhibition Road • London SW7 2AZ

Combination Dance Company presents REcode, a dance work explaining cutting edge medical research into cancer treatment. Created with support from Imperial College London, the dancers transform molecular biology into entertaining dance, whilst also reflecting the experiences of those who have been treated. The scientific content is based upon, and was developed with support from Professor Michael Seckl and Ana Costa-Pereira at Imperial College London and their team of leading researchers.

Whilst conveying complex science simply through movement, REcode reflects upon the importance of ongoing improvements in different types of cancer treatment and prognosis to those affected and the hope they each hold.

REcode is choreographed by Artistic Director, Anne-Marie Smalldon with a cast of outstanding dancers trained at British conservatoires including London Contemporary Dance School and the Northern School of Contemporary Dance plus two artists from Team ProRank the UK’S leading martial arts performance team bringing a unique combination of martial arts, dance and weaponry.

Combination Dance Company is committed to contributing to public health agendas through dance, offering performances and dance activities that aim to inspire and encourage participation. In 2008 Combination Dance were recognised by the Mayor of London with a health award for their outstanding partnership with the Richmond-upon-Thames local authority and their commitment to improving public health.

REcode is being presented at other public events in the summer including a free event at The National Physical Laboratory in Teddington on July 17. This project has been supported by Arts Council England through Grants for The Arts.

 

Further performances and information can be found at

Website                      www.combinationdance.co.uk

Facebook                   www.facebook.com/combinationdance

Twitter                       @CombinationDC                   #REcodedance            #impfest

Prof Jeremy Nicholson involved in major study on colon cancer risk for Americans and Africans

Food beansProf Jeremy Nicholson was the team leader from Imperial College on a study to investigate the possible roles of diet and gut bacteria.

An international team including scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and Imperial College London carried out a study with a group of 20 African American volunteers and another group of 20 participants from rural South Africa. The two groups swapped diets under tightly controlled conditions for two weeks.

Read more on this via the coverage below and the BBC World Service interview which features Prof Nicholson (32 minutes in).

Guardian: Bowel cancer risk may be reduced by rural African diet, study finds
Imperial: Diet swap has dramatic effects on colon cancer risk for Americans and Africans
BBC: Diet swap experiment reveals junk food’s harm to gut

Mental Health Awareness Week @ Imperial College 11 – 15 May 2015

Mental Health Awareness Week Provisional posterMental Health Awareness Week was created by the Mental Health Foundation and is celebrated every year from the 11th – 17th May. The aim is to get the public to talk more openly about the issues that surround mental health and to raise awareness of the issues people face. It is also a time to get people thinking about their own mental wellbeing.

This year the theme is Mindfulness, which is all about focusing on the here and now; to forget about the past or worrying about the future, and only concentrate on what is happening in the moment.

To celebrate MHAW this year, the Equality & Diversity Unit alongside the Learning & Development Centre, Occupational Health, and Ethos have put together a range of activities, training, and events.

During this week we also encourage you to wear green to support our campaign and take part in our twitter competition where we ask you to tweet us at Imperial_LDC a photo of your lunch break – the most creative lunch break will win a prize. To find out more about our #reclaim your lunch Twitter competition for Mental Health Awareness Week visit our webpage.

We will keep you updated with tweets, emails, newsletters and posters with ways you can get involved in Mental Health Awareness week.

Please see the poster for a quick guide to what we have running that week and see the webpage for more information and bookings.

 

Julia Anderson celebrates 40 years at Imperial

JuliaImperial staff came together to mark milestone anniversaries at the College’s annual Long Server celebrations.

Staff who had reached 20, 25 and 30 years of service in 2014 gathered at a drinks reception on Tuesday 14 April and those marking 35 and 40 years with Imperial attended a formal dinner on the 20th April.

Surgery and Cancer’s very own Departmental Manager Julia Anderson was there to join in the festivities and celebrate her 40 years at Imperial and features in the College news story of the event.

First prize winner

Var

 

Congratulations to Sarah Onida (Clinical Research Fellow working within Vascular Surgery) who won first prize for her poster entitled ‘Analysis of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) in Varicose Veins Surgery’, at the 6th Venous Symposium which took place in New York this month.

‘Teaching the Teachers’ Human Anatomy for Biology Teachers Course

Biology Teaching Day

On Friday the 17th of April, the Human Anatomy Unit hosted an outreach event for A level biology teachers, in conjunction with the Anatomical Society and the Society of Biology. Twenty five teachers from England and Wales attended the day long course designed to give a practical overview of human anatomy to underpin their biology teaching.

Feedback from the participants was excellent and a similar event is now likely to take place annually.

More information on the Human Anatomy Unit can be found here.

Biobanking for environment, nature and clinical medicine Conference

ConferenceImperial and the National History Museum are co-hosting the next Annual Conference of the European Society for Biobanking from Wednesday 30th September to Friday 2nd October at the Olympia Conference Centre.

The conference theme is: Biobanking for environment, nature and clinical medicine and will feature a wide variety of fascinating content from across the biobanking spectrum. There will be sessions on Cryobiology, Biobanking for Metabolomics and Proteomics, ‘Big Data’, Environmental Biobanking, Biobank Assessment, Biobanking Education and ELSI in Biobanking. There will be contributed paper sessions where talks are selected from submitted abstracts as well as poster viewing and discussion sessions, with prizes for the best posters.

At the conference exhibition, vendors from around the world will demonstrate the latest products, services, and technology in the field of repository and specimen collection. In addition, there will be commercial workshops, and the “Mission Possible” vendor-guided practical sessions. As usual, there will also be a full social programme including a cocktail reception and a Gala Dinner.

Please join us in London this October for what promises to be a truly outstanding conference for the field of biobanking!

More information can be found on the ESBB’s 2015 Annual Conference webpage.

 

Institute of Global Health Innovation March update

News:

  • IGHI logoWill Warburton left CHP with Gianluca Fontana replacing him as Acting Director of Operations.

Publications/media coverage:

Events:

  • Ryan Callahan gave a 30 minute talk at NHS England Event on Digital Maturity on 3rd February 2015 and another on “Integrated primary and secondary care data to improve patient care” at Westminster Health Forum: Electronic health records and IT in the NHS: data protection, care.data and implementing Personalized health and care 2020 on 10th February 2015.
  • Professor Darzi gave a talk on ‘Digital Health and Disruption of Health Care Delivery’ on 3 March 2015 at Olympia as part of UK E-Health Week.
  • Julie McQueen presented the GDHI study “Diffusing innovations in healthcare” at the “Tag-IT” conference in Tromso, Norway on 18 March.
  • Professor Darzi gave the Inaugural Arthur KC Li Oration on ‘Innovation in Healthcare’ on 19 March 2015 at the International Minimally Invasive Surgery Conference in Hong Kong.

Awards granted:

  • Sarah Jones awarded the finalist of the Breakthrough Innovation Prize and recognition of ‘Moonshot Thinking’ from Google X’s Solve for X program at Imperial College on 19 March 2015 for her PhD project in digital mental health. Solve For X also retweeted on Twitter.
  • Health Education England Tender won

Prof Wilson becomes Fellow of the DMDG

WilsonProfessor Ian Wilson has been given the status of Fellow of the Drug Metabolism Discussion Group (DMDG) in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the Drug metabolism pharmacokinetics sciences in industry and now academia, along with all his excellent support of the DMDG itself.

The Drug Metabolism Discussion Group (DMDG) is an informal World-wide association for scientists engaged in research and development within the drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics and related disciplines of the pharmaceutical industry.

As further recognition of his achievements Prof Wilson has also been invited to give the DMDG Fellowship Lecture at the Open Meeting in September.